I will soon reprint my self-published book, Virgin Island Tales of Olden Days, first published in 1997, and will offer it to you on my web site. Where have ten years flown? Many or most of us ask ourselves that question. Seems to me, I've been glued to my desk writing novels. I asked myself, is there something else I wanted to do? Not really! There are times when I made plans to go to St. Thomas; it's twelve years since I've been there, been home, but I never go, even though I miss the weather and the color of sea, sky, flowers, and houses too.

I don't go home any more because it pains me to do so. The island has changed. The population has turned over, with all the newcomers from other islands and from the US. It's incredibly congested-traffic is terrible. Many of the older Danish homes, including my grandmother's, where I was born, have been converted into cold, impersonal office spaces. Many of the formerly elegant shops have been chopped into small spaces and concessions have replaced carefully selected inventory. All but one cousin of my family of origin have moved away, as I have, or passed away. Drug traffickers have moved in and crime is on the increase

I weigh the longing I have to see the islands dotting the far horizon, the blues of sea and sky, and the magnificent harbor against the pain I feel the moment the plane lands, and I opt for no pain.

Above my desk hangs a photo of the harbor of St. Thomas, a view I saw from my home from my earliest memories to the day I left the island the last time. It is an older shot, taken when a few yachts and not huge cruise ships dotted the harbor and the hillsides were not peppered with houses. It is the St. Thomas I long for, the St. Thomas that lives in my memory and in my heart. So, I close my eyes and remember my childhood and all the years I lived there, when it was paradise, and I am grateful.

I don't know about you, but I don't like the colors of winter. I find winter here all gray and brown and too many houses and other buildings are gray and brown. Why don't they use color? I wonder. It would certainly lift my spirit if driving along I could see a bright yellow house or a mauve house or even a blue house. I decided to turn my own home, which is not a Victorian style house, into a painted lady as you might see on Cape May. The house is green, and I am having the trim painted yellow and the windows framed in yellow. It's about half done and certainly makes me feel brighter and happier.

Jacob's Bride is the title of my new, unpublished yet novel that is set in St. Thomas from1862 to1868. I chose that time frame because it is historically interesting and very dramatic and traumatic for the residents of the island. In 1866-67 the U.S. Secretary of State negotiated with Denmark to purchase St. Thomas and St. John. This treaty was signed by both Nations and voted on positively by the people of the islands.

In 1867, four days after the hurricane season ended, the island was struck with a brutal hurricane and three weeks later several strong earthquakes and a tidal wave (tsunami) added to incredible destruction. How do people cope with the loss of their world as they have known it? They wait for help from the US and discover that the US Senate has refused to ratify the treaty of sale.

Imagine a world without religious prejudice. The Danes were and are a liberal and peaceable nation, neutral in times of war, and they welcomed all comers and all religions to the island. Ships of all nations refueled, repaired, and brought and took goods to and from St. Thomas, which became the keystone of a thriving commerce that earned the island the title of Emporium of the West Indies, where goods from every quarter of the world could be bought, sold, exchanged.

This novel weds an immigrant's story with history. It is the story of Jacob's bride, Rivka, later to be called Rebecca, a Jewish girl of 17 come from Lithuania to marry a man she has never seen, and it tells of the thriving Jewish Community into which she was thrust and her amazement to live in a world without religious persecution or prejudice.

My research included journals and diaries from the 1860s and 80s and newspapers of that time (in English) from the Enid Baa Library in St. Thomas. The photos included in the novel come from a variety of sources.

This novel is almost finished and will go to my agent to be shopped, sold, and published. I hope that you will enjoy reading it.

People ask where my stories come from? What inspires me and sets me on the course of a new novel? The answer varies. Sometimes, a story brings me awake in the middle of the night. Sometimes it comes in the bathtub, as The Ladies of Covington did, sometimes while I am writing a different novel entirely. Sometimes an opening chapter will fill my head and then nothing for a time. I rarely know a story's beginning and its end when I begin to write it. It unfolds. You can't send a page with a title and the word unfolding to an editor, so I must write a synopsis, which I do, but then the story takes its own unique twists and turns as I go along, so far to the satisfaction of my editor.

email: jmedlicott@mindspring.com

web: http://www.joanmedlicott.com